Baptism of Fire: New Brunswick's Public Health Movement and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic

In the fall of 1918 when war-weary New Brunswickers were hit by the influenza pandemic, theirs was the only Canadian province with a Minister of Health, the first to be appointed anywhere in the British Empire. But it was a new position and a controversial one. This paper traces the growth of a public health movement in New Brunswick in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the campaign for the establishment of a provincial Department of Health, and the role played by the 1918 influenza epidemic in legitimizing and consolidating the newly minted Department, masthead of the public health movement.